Adventure of the Blue Carbuncles 4

By : Jim Blossom
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We join our bog-brained hero on the morning of his first full day in Pattaya, the toilet seat of S.E. Asia. As a wise, balding man once said: “an evil shit-wind had blown in” and our hero was ankle-deep in faecal facts and fancies. The unwiped mental faeces of his night with Captain Sorkan were still smeared across his consciousness, papering his memory like a soggy palmful of coilers. He lay on his hotel bed like a steaming lump of excrement, freshly extruded from the puckered orifice that is the late night bar scene. And so, pinched off and plopped, he grunts and pushes his way out of the bowels of his hotel cavity and into the murky stream of excremental masses flowing like explosive bursts of chunky brown champagne through the streets toward the great oceanic birm all in pursuit of big fat turd, Jerry Tonnage.

The next day, thankfully, Jerry Tonnage slept in.

Periodically checking the telescope I had trained on his room, I kicked back on my squeaky hotel bed and stared up at the trippy spin of the ceiling fan. I could detect a hint of Lek’s perfume still on my clothes and I wondered what it would have been like to wake up with her next to me. With this thought, I could feel a case of morning glory coming on. But then I started wondering whether Lek had woken up in that very bed once or twice before...with somebody else’s morning glory poking her in the side. Then everything collapsed.

Just past noon, Jerry finally left his room. Grabbing my video camera, I followed in a temper that—after not hooking up with Lek, the prostitute—swung back and forth between sour and regretful. As Jerry wove his way through the busy colourful streets, my mind drifted back to my totally awesome conversation with Captain Sorkan the night before and I started to look forward to our meeting that coming evening. My mood lightened and Lek’s fine little booty became the furthest thing from my mind.

As Jerry stumbled over the uneven concrete like a ridiculous ambling sea creature in sandals, I reviewed the facts of the case Captain Sorkan had presented me with. My mind twisted and turned like a salted slug. The murderers, were they co-workers?...And what were they smuggling?...Guns maybe! That would be cool. All the while, I filmed a fat, balding jeweller from San Francisco walking, with complete disinterest, past delicious Thai girls offering him both their bodies and their dirty talents.

Come to think of it, I should have wondered at that, but the girls’ allure couldn’t penetrate my mental cloak of clues, possible motives, and grisly death, either. But when Jerry walked up the steps of a place called the Boys-Boys-Boys Club and was greeted with a kiss from a young shirtless Thai man in tight jeans who then led him inside by the hand...it kinda slapped me in the face. His wife’s suspicions of infidelity were, in fact, going to turn out to be correct. At least sort of...Jerry Tonnage was gay!

Fuck a duck, hey?

My job had taken me into lots of gay bars back in San Fran, so I was just delaying my entrance long enough so as not to be too obvious, when suddenly I felt a slap on my backside. I turned to face the leer of a young man in makeup. With high heels and tassels he was dressed a little like a fifties movie starlet fallen on hard times.

Oh, oh! What have I got myself into here?

“Hallo, sexy man,” he said in a low voice. He was surrounded by a creepy pack of effeminate little delinquents, who started making vulgar taunts at me.

A wave of homophobic fear, of which I am not proud, passed over me. Amid a chorus of their cat calls and laughter, I scurried across the street to safety.

So much for that idea! I think I’ll just wait til Jerry comes back out.

I found an open air bar—they call them ‘beer bars’ here—about a half-block away which offered a good view of the street, and I sat down.

The only other customer at the beer bar was an old codger with a confederate flag bandanna around his head. He was two seats over from me and chatted amiably with a cluster of pretty barmaids. I hesitated a moment before confirming that they were actually girls behind the bar and not just girlie-lookin’ young boys.

Whew!

“Drink sir?” asked one of the pretty little barmaids. She had a perfect figure. A pair of tight shorts, that hugged her shapely thighs, revealed a stunning pair of smooth brown legs.

Jeez where do they get these women from? There isn’t a six beer or more girl in the whole damned town!

“Sir?” she repeated with a flitter of adorable lashes.

“A beer please,” I stammered, “One of those.” I pointed to the fellow’s beer two stools away. It was in a tall green bottle that read Kloster.

As she busied herself in the icebox, I couldn’t help but admire her smooth feminine shape from the rear.

“Pretty little thing ain’t she?” commented the fellow with a southern drawl.

“Yes. Seems like they all are here.”

He laughed. “Must be your first time to Thailland.”

“Yeah...I must have that written on my forehead or something,” I chuckled and spun around to face the dusty pavement.

“Don’t worry boy, when you’ve been here as long as I have, you can just tell.”

We were on a side street, not far from the sea-side promenade and the bustle of the beach road, but aside from the corner location occupied by Boys-Boys-Boys, it was secluded and easily missed. I realised only then, that I was on the very edge of the gay section of town. The clues had been all around me but I was too absorbed with the murder case to even notice!

A few doors down from Boys-Boys-Boys lay a quiet little shop house bar that caught my eye. It was an open front affair in the same style as the countless English and German bars we had passed.

A flag, which looked like a hodgepodge of coloured triangles, was set in a back-lit plastic sign that said: Yannie’s Place.

“Say, what kind of flag is that on that sign there?” I asked.

He peered over his shoulder. “Boy,” he said, “If yer shinin’ to the bar maid, ya’all had better stay away from that place.”

“Why’s that?”

“That’s another one a them homo joints!”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I see ‘em paradin’ by here everyday. This time a day they stop in at Boys-Boys-Boys over there...fixin’ to get a Louisiana lip-lock on their love-porkchop, I reckon. Don’t suppose them there homos are any different than regular fellas that way. All the busy afternoon places for normal fella’s like you an’ me are all short-time bars—only difference is we get a pretty lil’ thing, like that one behind the bar there, to kiss the squirrel for us as opposed to a lil’ faggy-boy like one a them.” He pointed to the young men who’d accosted me. “Anyway after the homos are all done at Boys-Boys-Boys they mostly go in there and talk with Big Yannie.”

“Big Yannie?”

He pointed to a puffy brown man sitting at one of the front tables. The man had shocks of long bleach-blonde hair to match his gaudy array of jewellery.

“Yeah. Big Yannie, he’s an old queen who’s lived here for years. A real rodeo dandy, he is. Got his fingers in a thousand pies ‘round here on account a he’s a fag like. King-Fag ya might say. Them dandies just like doin’ business with other dandies, I suppose. Don’t matter if they’re Thai or falong, they’re just more likely to trust another gay fella, rather than a normal bo like you or me.” He flashed a grin full of boxy layered teeth.

“Oh.” I noted a copy of the Post by my companion’s elbow. As with the Thai newspapers, the same horrid pictures of the latest blow-torch victim was strewn across the front page. “What do you make of those terrible killings?” I asked.

“Thievin’ bastards deserve it!” he cussed, his face twisting into a hateful scowl.

I looked at him in stunned silence.

“Sorry boy. But don’t get me started about Thai customs officers. There ain’t a worse bunch of scoundrels on the planet!”

“Really!” I exclaimed. This might show the murders in a different light. “Why do you say that?”

“They’re the reason why this country will always be a little third world rip-off joint,” he ranted as white bits of spittle started to collect at the corners of his mouth. “Here’s their little scam... Say a fella wants to set himself up a little export business ‘ere. Good idea right? Things are dirt cheap here, all ya gotta do is get ‘em on a boat and send ‘em to a cousin back home to sell ‘em right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Wrong! Before the goods get loaded on a ship they gotta go through the customs lock-up.”

“What? Wait a minute, I don’t understand. Why would customs be interested in things leaving the country? Aren’t they only worried about things coming in?”

He flashed me those jumbled Chicklets again. “Not in Thailland, boy. See they’s got all sorts of laws regarding exports. Buddha statues for example. Ya gotta have a licence to export Buddha statues. Mostly, I reckon, so as those bastard customs officers can hold people up for bribes and the like.”

At this point I noticed Jerry Tonnage emerged from the Boys-Boys-Boys Club. I discretely flipped on the video camera I had positioned on the barstool beside me. His hair was wet as though he’d just had a bath or a shower—I didn’t want to speculate on what. Just as the old codger had predicted, he started strolling in the direction of Yannie’s Place.

“It happened to me you know!” exclaimed the old codger. “I arranged for a tailor up in Bangkok to make silk dress jackets for me. Gave me a damned good price too. We’re talkin’ large quantities. You know, a half dozen different styles and colours. So many mediums,...so many larges,...extra-larges...you know. I had a buddy back home with a retail shop. (‘Course he’s not my buddy anymore, thanks to them bastards.) My pal put up most of the money for the inventory. My job was to make sure the Thai tailor didn’t rip us off. Best way to do that was to inspect the boxes of jackets just before they was locked away in customs lock-up...outta the further reach of that bastard tailor, we figured...”

I slowly turned the camera’s lens to follow Jerry as he walked into Yannie’s Place and joined its doughy proprietor at the front table. As Big Yannie stood and extended a warm greeting, I realised what a big fellow he indeed was—well over six feet tall. I settled the camera on the front of Yannie’s Place while the two of them sat and talked about whatever it is big fat gay guys talk about, and redirected my attention back to the old codger who had been talking the whole time without missing a beat.

“...so with the success of the first shipment, the order got bigger. The front money, to the tailor got bigger too. That was when things started to get all twisted up like rattlers in a burlap bag. Either the boxes showed up in Alabama short, or with all the wrong sizes and colours inside...that son-of-a-bitchin’ tailor was gettin’ rid of his junk on us! Hell! I went to his blasted store one time and saw the same damned jackets, that had been in one of our shipments, for sale on one of his racks!”

“What?” I sputtered. The old codger had lost me somewhere.

“Ya! Of course my buddy back home was blamin’ me! Figured I’d cut some side deal with this son-of-a-bitchin’ tailor, and we were getting rich at his expense!”

“I don’t understand. I thought you said you inspected the boxes before they were shipped?”

“Damn it boy! Dig them potatoes outta yer ears an’ listen to me! I told ya, it’s them Thai customs officers!” he yelled, pounding his fist on the bar.

I was like, totally dumbfounded at the man’s anger. The girls behind the bar kept their distance.

“These thieving Thais!” he ranted, thick white spittle flying and the girls cowering with sour looks for the hateful old man. “Them bastards were being bribed by the tailor, you see! I know now that this sort of thing happens all the damned time. The Thai exporter goes behind his foreign partner’s back and bribes them thievin’ bastards down at the dockyards...”

I could tell that the girls behind the bar were getting a little pissed at the codger badmouthing Thais.

Out of the corner of my eye I spied Big Yannie leave Jerry and disappear into a back room with a cell phone.

“...Even if the foreign partner has— Damn it, boy! Listen to me an’ stop worryin’ about them damned queers! Ain’t ya got no queers where you come from?”

“I’m from San Francisco.”

“I don’t care if you just dropped outta Dolly Parton’s gobber, I’m tryin’ ta teach ya’ how things work over here! Like I was sayin’, even if the partner has an agent here to inspect the goods (like my buddy had me), even inspect it right inside the damned lock-up, it don’t do no good! Those bastards do the exporter’s dirty work for them.”

Jerry, thankfully, appeared to be getting ready to leave. I was getting uncomfortable.

“...Rifling through shipments, returning certain boxes to the exporter, switching others, all in the dead of night. When the angry phone call from Birmingham comes two weeks later, the Thai exporter plays stupid and says he doesn’t know how it could have happened, after all, the agent...” (He scowled bitterly.) “...me in this case, had inspected the damned thing!”

“I see.”

“Can’t do nothin’ about it neither. If you take the bastards to court it’s your word against a Thai’s, in a Thai court!”

He pounded the bar with a climactic thud then flew into a round of bitter muttering just as the oldest of the barmaids stepped forward waving an accusing finger.

“You don’t speak bad Thailland!” she screeched at us. “You want speak bad Thailland, you leave now!”

“Go to hell, you miserable old cow!” spat the codger, “You’re just another thievin’ damned Thai like the rest of them!”

The woman spun into a flurry of Thai insults that she flung at both the codger and me!

It was time to go. Kneading the peak of my cap, I paid my bill and looked apologetically at the girls behind the bar. The air felt shit poisonous. They viewed both of us with hatred and I wished I hadn’t showed so much interest in the codger’s ranting. As for him, he seemed quite happy to answer the woman’s assault with his own round of insults and accusations.

I skittled outta there as fast as I could and was only too grateful to renew my pursuit of Jerry as he ambled back toward the gay bars we had passed on the way down there. I had time now to think on the new angles that the codger’s story lent to the murder case. The subject of ‘motive’—why anyone would want to kill a Thai customs officer, that is—suddenly appeared to have a shit-load of new possibilities.

* * *

The next four hours involved tailing Jerry from one gay bar to another where he indulged in drinks, fried snacks from the street vendors, and at least two more booty calls with girlie-lookin’ Thai men along the way.

Well there’s certainly nothing wrong with his libido, I thought. No wonder Ruth is pissed off, Jerry’s gonna have more men in two weeks than she’s had her whole life.

The sun was setting, and I had indulged my hunger and curiosity at several of the food stands by the time Jerry finally made it back to his room. I switched off the video camera and scampered through the traffic back to my own hotel. I had three tapes full of Jerry’s shenanigans that would be like gold to Ruth and her slimy lawyer.

“The Blow-Torch Murderers have struck again!” cried the desk clerk as I walked into the lobby. She had one ear to the phone and was relaying the sizzling details to a group of shit-scared maids perching wide-eyed on a nearby sofa.

“What’s that about a murder?” I blurted. Immediately curiosity and excitement stirred in me.

“Yes, a murder, sir! Another customs man killed with fire,” she cried, “Same-same before, but this one work Laem Chebang! No Bangkok! Happen in very near, in Chon Buri!”

With this last line the maids flew into a renewed frenzy.

“Laem Chebang? I don’t understand. Where is that?”

“Big port where he work. Very near! He killed at home, in Chon Buri! Only one hour from here, up Sukhumvit Highway! Only one hour! Vera near.”

Adventure of the Blue Carbuncles will continue next week (week of 27/03/06)

jim_blossom2001@yahoo.com

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